I hadn't been following the news for a couple of days, so I popped over to one of my old haunts, The Register to see if there was anything I should know about. Occasionally, especially if I visit The Register early morning in Europe, I can pick up some interesting fresh stories that are fairly exclusive, or have some different angles.
I was greeted with
In fact the headline wasn't a total disaster, it caught my eye, maybe because it could also suggest an end to Wikipedia itself, but maybe that suggestion is a bit subtle. So I highlighted the very clear "comment" paragraph and hit my "Ultimate Digg Bookmarklet" I ended up with the following:- After pressure over the weekend from Wikipedia's Il Duce Jimmy Wales, the encyclopedia's most illustrious fake professor Ryan Jordan has resigned his post at Wikia Inc.
I did add one small detail from the original title that just seemed to add a little more curiosity… a question mark "?" I hadn't read the whole article in depth, and there could have been a good reason for The Register's use of the question mark in their title.
24 Year Old Fake Wikipedia Professor Forced To Step Down?
All I did was submit a story I thought was good, seemed to be original from a reputable source, and which might be of interest to people on Digg.
A couple of hours later it was up to 5 Diggs, and I also noticed a number of similar stories that had quite a few more Diggs. Doing a little searching I discovered the story had been breaking over a number of days. With my submission effectively the same story, though with different commentary, I didn't expect it to get much reaction.
I am not a top Digg user, and had never had a story promoted before. I have a few friends on Digg, but we are talking 10s, not 100s or even 1000s.
16 hours later I was again browsing through Digg, mainly to see if there were any interesting comments on a story about the story is still live on Digg, it hasn't been buried.
I Am Not A CopywriterIf this story was being written by Brian over at Michel Fortin then they would probably be able to tell you why that particular headline was successful.
I counted at least 20 maybe 30 stories on the same subject, and those were just the ones that didn't get buried. I am sure The Register being looked upon as a credible source helped, but lots of credible sources were reporting on the same story, and many of the headlines I have seen were very similar, but without one small detail.
?
It wasn't until I started reading the comments on the Digg story that I realised why the story might have been Digged, though honestly it wasn't something that was "engineered for success". All I did was submit a story…
Half the comments were actually related to the question mark, such as
Why is there a question mark in the title?
Hes copying fox news with the question mark. Adds mystery and intrigue hehe.
and many others…
So did one character turn a 4 day old news story into a front page Digg?
*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu
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